John Petrie’s Collection of

Miscellaneous Quotes

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Because if it didn’t work out, I didn’t want to blow the whole day.: -Paul Hornung, Green Bay Packers running back, when asked why his wedding was held in the morning
My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.: -Pablo Picasso
It is fun being in the same decade with you.: -Franklin Roosevelt, in a letter to Winston Churchill
If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.: -David Daye
(I’d probably say those first four are my four favorite of all time.)
No sane man will dance.: -Marcus Tullius Cicero
Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.: -Nido Qubein
Whatever you are, be a good one.: -Abraham Lincoln
African-American Neighborhood Terrorized By Ask Murderer: -The Onion headline (That is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on The Onion!)
...it would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice.: -Voltaire
To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.: -Elbert Hubbard
It is far more odious to say too much than it is to say too little.: -me
Beware of the man who does not drink.: -unknown
He who moves not forward, goes backward.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.: -Edward Gibbon
I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, “I’d like some fries.” The girl at the counter said, “Would you like some fries with that?”: -Jay Leno
Son, looks to me like you’re spending too much time on one subject.: -Shelby Metcalf, Texas A&M basketball coach, to a player who received four F’s and a D
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.: -Rita Rudner
The other night I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.: -Rodney Dangerfield
Mastery is often taken for egotism.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is only one thing in the world that is worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.: -Oscar Wilde
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.: -Oscar Wilde
Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.: -W.C. Fields
All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not.: -Samuel Johnson
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.: -Voltaire
Black holes are where God divided by zero.: -Steven Wright
Today I was arrested for scalping low numbers at the deli.: -Steven Wright
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that people who have the most birthdays live the longest.: -Larry Lorenzoni
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.: -Douglas Adams
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life.: -Bertrand Russell
Altogether national hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.: -Golda Meir
Give me a museum and I’ll fill it.: -Pablo Picasso
Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.: -Mark Twain
It is wiser to find out than suppose.: -Mark Twain
I was once walking through the forest, alone, and a tree fell right in front of me, and I didn’t hear it.: -Steven Wright
Beer is something that you have for refreshment when you don’t want to really drink. It helps men to communicate without making you fall over and beat up your wife and do other terrible things.: -Richard Musson in a news article, on the Russian Duma declaring beer a soft drink
We can lick gravity, but the paperwork’s a bit tougher.: -Wernher von Braun
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.: -Wernher von Braun
Damn it, Smithers, this isn’t rocket science; it’s brain surgery!: -Mr. Burns, “Treehouse of Horror II”
A wise man never knows all; only fools know everything.: -unknown
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.: -Oscar Wilde
I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade.: -Bobby Jones, golfer, when told it was 105° in the shade
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.: -Douglas Adams
I don’t care to belong to any organization that accepts me as a member.: -Groucho Marx
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.: -Oscar Wilde
I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.: -Samuel Beckett
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.: -Kahlil Gibran
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.: -William Blake
Speak softly and carry a big stick.: -Theodore Roosevelt
Yesterday I told a chicken to cross the road. It said, “What for?”: -Steven Wright
We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.: -Michel de Montaigne
It’s not so much what folks don’t know that causes problems; it’s what they do know that ain’t so.: -Artemus Ward
If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.: -Albert Einstein
A wise man hears one word and understands two.: -Jewish proverb
Shoot for the Moon because even if you miss, at least you’ll drift aimlessly through space for the rest of your natural life.: -me
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.: -H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.: -H.L. Mencken
“Love” is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.: -Robert A. Heinlein (Jubal Harshaw, Stranger in a Strange Land)
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.: -H.L. Mencken
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.: -Wernher von Braun
Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.: -Arthur C. Clarke
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.: -Albert Einstein
Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for one that does him in.: -Casey Stengel
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.: -Michel de Montaigne
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.: -Samuel Butler
Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.: -Dionysus the Elder
World ends; women, minorities hardest hit.: -proposed New York Times headline
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.): -Robert A. Heinlein
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.: -Winston Churchill
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.: -Mark Twain
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.: -Robert A. Heinlein
When all is said and done, as a rule, more is said than done.: -Lou Holtz
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.: -Dorothy Parker
You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.: -Dorothy Parker, when asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence
You lose.: -Calvin Coolidge, to a newspaper reporter who bet him he could make him say three words
How can they tell?: -Dorothy Parker, on the news that Calvin Coolidge had died
Learning isn’t a means to an end; it’s an end in and of itself.: -Robert A. Heinlein
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost.: -Steven Wright (just think about it for a minute)
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.: -Mark Twain
In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock.: -Thomas Jefferson
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.: -Aldous Huxley
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.: -Aldous Huxley
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.: -Mark Twain
I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, “Got any shoes you’re not using?”: -Steven Wright
I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.: -Steven Wright
Beware the dog who doesn’t bark; he will be the first one to bite.: -German proverb
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.: -Mark Twain
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.: -Mark Twain
Diplomacy is the art of saying, “Nice doggie,” until you can find a rock.: -Will Rogers
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?: -Will Rogers
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.: -Francis Bacon
We ought to send one of our good ol’ boys to the British Open to give TV viewers some real excitement, like: “He must’ve hit that sucker a mile, but it landed in the weeds out yonder by that ditch with sand in it.”: -The Vent
Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.: -Karl Marx
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.: -Blaise Pascal
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.: -Gilbert Keith Chesterton
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.: -Ronald Reagan, testing a radio microphone, 1984
Anna Nicole said she “had a slender model inside of her.” I'm guessing that was what she had for lunch.: -The Vent
Inside me, there’s a thin woman trying to get out. Luckily, I can shut her up with chocolate.: -The Vent
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.: -Andre Gide
The fool wonders, the wise man asks.: -Benjamin Disraeli
The secret of success is this: there is no secret of success.: -Elbert Hubbard
Life is just one damned thing after another.: -Elbert Hubbard
Folks who never do any more than they are paid for, never get paid for any more than they do.: -Elbert Hubbard
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.: -Elbert Hubbard
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.: -Elbert Hubbard
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.: -Winston Churchill
Thoroughness characterizes all successful men. Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail.: -Elbert Hubbard
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.: -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Apparently this doesn’t apply to my quotes lists, but, oh, well...)
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.: -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It is necessary to try to surpass oneself always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.: -Christina, Queen of Sweden
If we take anything out of the pledge, take out the word “indivisible” and then kick out California.: -The Vent
There’s nothing wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.: -Ross McDonald
It’s better to be silent and thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt.: -Abraham Lincoln
We’re not giving away any football players who could hurt us later. I don’t mind people thinking I’m stupid, but I don’t want to give them any proof.: -Bum Phillips, Houston Oilers coach
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.: -Henry J. Kaiser
The first person you should distrust is the one who says he would never lie.: -me
There is only one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him. If he says yes, you know he is crooked.: -Groucho Marx
Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.: -John Churton Collins
It is bad enough that so many people believe things without any evidence. What is worse is that some people have no conception of evidence and regard facts as just someone else’s opinion.: -Thomas Sowell
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.: -Arthur C. Clarke
No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.: -Henry Petroski
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, “Eureka!” (“I found it!”) but rather, “Hmm... that’s funny...”: -Isaac Asimov
Hell no. When I die I want to be sick.: -Abe Lemons, Texas football coach, when asked if he jogs
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.: -Samuel Butler
A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.: -Samuel Butler
The human body was designed by a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?: -unknown
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.: -Albert Szent-Györgyi
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.: -Samuel Johnson
You ask, What is our policy? I will say; “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.” You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.: -Winston Churchill
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.: -Winston Churchill
The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.: -Winston Churchill
The person who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.: -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What is the use of a new-born child?: -Benjamin Franklin, when asked the use of a new invention
Don’t be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small steps.: -David Lloyd George
The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.: -Vincent T. Lombardi
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.: -Vincent T. Lombardi
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.: -Abraham Lincoln
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.: -Voltaire
I’m no different from anyone else with two arms, two legs, and 4200 hits.: -Pete Rose
I’d get real close to him and breathe on his goggles.: -Johnny Kerr, on how he would guard Kareem Abdul-Jabaar
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.: -Winston Churchill
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.: -Winston Churchill
I have a lifetime contract. That means I can’t be fired during the third quarter if we’re ahead and moving the ball.: -Lou Holtz
Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.: -Joe Adcock, Milwaukee Braves first baseman
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.: -George Carlin
I met a guy who was half Italian and half Chinese. His name was Video Pong.: -unknown
It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.: -Mark Twain
Statistics always remind me of the fellow who drowned in a river whose average depth was three feet.: -Woody Hayes, Ohio State football coach
My wife made me a millionaire. I used to have three million.: -Bobby Hull
Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.: -Dale Carnegie
Take care of the large problems and the small ones will tend not to bother you.: -me
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.: -Dale Carnegie
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.: -Dale Carnegie
I had a better year than he did.: -Babe Ruth, on why President Hoover made less than the $80,000 Ruth was demanding in 1930
Before you can win a game, you have to not lose it.: -Chuck Noll, Pittsburgh Steelers coach
All the fat guys watch me and say to their wives, “See, there’s a fat guy doing okay. Bring me another beer.”: -Mickey Lolich, Detroit Tigers pitcher
There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.: -Robert Byrne
The good thing about stereotypes is they’re usually true.: -me
We seem to have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart?: -The Vent
Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.: -Immanuel Kant
Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.: -Richard Dawkins
Last season we couldn’t win at home and we were losing on the road. My failure as a coach was that I couldn’t think of anyplace else to play.: -Harry Neale, NHL coach
I found out that it’s not good to talk about my troubles. Eighty percent of the people who hear them don’t care and the other twenty percent are glad you’re having trouble.: -Tommy Lasorda
I tell him, “Attaway to hit, George,”: -Jim Frey, Kansas City Royals manager, on the advice he gives George Brett on hitting
How do these celebrities stay so impossibly thin? Simple: They have full-time personal trainers, who advise them on nutrition, give them pep talks, and shoot them with tranquilizer darts whenever they try to crawl, on hunger-weakened limbs, toward the packet of rice cakes that constitutes the entire food supply in their 37,000-square-foot mansions. For most celebrities, the biggest meal of the day is toothpaste (they use reduced-fat Crest).: -Dave Barry
I left because of illness and fatigue. The fans were sick and tired of me.: -John Ralston, former Denver Broncos coach
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.: -Jane Austen
The best way to turn a woman’s head is to tell her she has a beautiful profile.: -Sacha Guitry
It is best to read the weather forecasts before we pray for rain.: -Mark Twain
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.: -H.L. Mencken
If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.: -Erica Jong
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.: -Plutarch
It will contribute towards one’s object, who wishes to acquire a facility in the gaining of knowledge, to doubt judiciously.: -Aristotle
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.: -René Descartes
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.: -Francis Bacon
The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.: -unkown
Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.: -Chinese proverb
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.: -Linus Pauling
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.: -Henry David Thoreau

Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Winston Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”

Blind people come to the park just to listen to him pitch.: -Reggie Jackson, on Tom Seaver
You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax, tomorrow you’ll be afraid to cough.: -Pearl Williams
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes.: -Steven Wright
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.: -Lyall Watson
If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow, sleep late.: -Henny Youngman
Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won’t be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife did.: -Henny Youngman
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.: -Socrates
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth—that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.: -H.L. Mencken
A good walk spoiled.: -Mark Twain, definition of golf
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.: -W. Somerset Maugham
Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.: -Theodor Reik
Baseball wasn’t invented. It was discovered. A game so perfect could only have been devised by God, to be discovered by man.: -me
I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day ’cause that means it’s gonna be up all night.: -Steven Wright
We weren’t trying to walk him; he just wouldn’t swing at any bad pitches.: -Bobby Cox, on the Braves walking Barry Bonds 7 times in a series
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.: -Maya Angelou
Who’s the one guy who thinks we can do it?: -Mike Gottfried, Kansas football coach, on learning that the odds against Kansas winning the Big Eight were 100 to 1
A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me; I’m afraid of widths.: -Steven Wright
The only difference between me and General Custer is that I have to watch the films on Sunday.: -Rick Venturi, Northwestern football coach
I broke a mirror in my house, I’m supposed to get seven years of bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.: -Steven Wright
I don’t know how she did it, but Rachel got poison ivy on her brain. The only way she could scratch it was if she thought about sandpaper.: -Steven Wright
I spilled spot remover on my dog, now he’s gone.: -Steven Wright
Women: can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.: -Steven Wright
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.: -Dave Barry
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.: -Dave Barry
It’s about this Mormon who somehow becomes a porn star.: -Chris Gray, summarizing for me the Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie “Orgazmo”
I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball I want someone else to go chase it.: -Rogers Hornsby
One reason I don’t drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.: -Lady Nancy Astor
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.: -Bill Cosby
Beauty is only skin-deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.: -Parker’s Law
I haven’t been wrong since 1961, when I thought I made a mistake.: -Bob Hudson
Start slow and taper off.: -Walt Stack, on life
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?: -Edgar Bergen
Adolescence is the stage between infancy and adultery.: -unknown
Of course it’s possible that there really ISN’T any shadow government. The whole thing could be a phony story that was fed to The Washington Post to mislead our enemies. As you recall, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently admitted that the Pentagon had set up an office—officially named “The Office of Disinformation”—that was supposed to put out false statements to the media, thus throwing our enemies off the track. For example, if we were getting ready to attack Iraq, officials of the Office of Disinformation would hold a press conference and state: “Well, we’re certainly not going to attack Iraq!” The news media would report this, and Iraq would relax. (France, meanwhile, would surrender.): -Dave Barry
Meanwhile, in nearby Italy, Christopher Columbus was forming. As a youth, he spent many hours gazing out to sea and thinking to himself: “Someday I will be the cause of a holiday observed by millions of government workers.” The fact that he thought in English was only one of the amazing things about the young Columbus. Another was his conviction that if he sailed all the way across the Atlantic, he would reach India. We now know, thanks to satellite photographs, that this makes him seem as stupid as a buffalo, although it sounded pretty good when Columbus explained it to the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and his lovely wife, Imelda, who agreed to finance the voyage by selling six thousand pairs of her shoes.: -Dave Barry
Here’s a simple experiment that you might want to try if there is absolutely nothing else going on in your life. All you need is a cork, a bar magnet, and a pail of water. Simply attach your magnet to your cork, then drop it into the water, and voilà (literally, “you have a compass”)—you have a compass. How does it work? Simple. Notice that, no matter which way you turn the bucket, the cork always floats on top of the water (unless the magnet is too heavy). Using this scientific principle, early hardy mariners were able to tell at a glance whether they were sinking!: -Dave Barry
He went to an area that he called Virginia, in honor of the fact that it was located next to West Virginia, and he established a colony there, and then—this was the darnedest thing—he lost it. “Think!” his friends would say. “Where did you see it last?” But it was no use, and this particular colony is still missing today. Sometimes you see its picture on milk cartons.: -Dave Barry, on Sir Walter Raleigh
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.: -Aeschylus
He’s a fool who cannot conceal his wisdom.: -Benjamin Franklin
Darwin and NASCAR do not mix.: -Eric von Haessler of The Regular Guys, a NASCAR fan
It helps if the hitter thinks you’re a little crazy.: -Nolan Ryan
It’s not premarital sex if you don’t plan to get married.: -The Vent
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.: -a T-shirt at ThinkGeek.com
Q. As a fourth-year medical student, I am wondering if there is any way to remember the difference between “prostrate” and “prostate.” A. We contacted the Mayo Clinic, which informs us that surgeons there use this simple poem: If two R’s are found, it is down on the ground If one R is on hand, then it is a gland: -Dave Barry
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.: -Robert A. Heinlein
I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.: -Michel de Montaigne
Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.: -Eric Hoffer
We often use strong language not to express a powerful emotion but to evoke it in us.: -Eric Hoffer
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.: -Robert A. Heinlein
That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen—your values and choices. That which happened by accident—what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school—is totally unimportant.: -Ayn Rand
If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.: -Robert A. Heinlein
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.: -A.A. Milne
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself, and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.: -Marcus Aurelius
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.: -Martial
Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.: -Tom Robbins
“Too late.”: -Douglas MacArthur’s axiom that all military disasters are explained by two words
Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.: -Aaron Burr
I like vengeance as much as the next guy, if the next guy likes vengeance a whole lot….: -Jonah Goldberg
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been.: -William Hazlitt
To have is nothing; to earn is everything.: -me
Common sense is not so common.: -Voltaire
But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.: -Herman Melville
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have an occasional zebra in a horse race?: -The Vent
The worst thing life could be is easy.: -me
The best way I know to win an argument is to start by being in the right.: -Lord Halishan
The first Indian to hear a train thought it sounded like a tornado.: -The Vent (I’m sure they copied it from someone)
Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 ft/sec, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter.: -Dave Barry
How do you delete the Recycle Bin?: -Adam Schroeder, posing the great philosophical question of the 21st century, a modern conundrum to rival the old Buddhist question, “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?”
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.: -Steven Wright
My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”: -Steven Wright
Now, I ain’t sayin’ he should have killed her…but I understand.: -Chris Rock, on O.J.
If there is no struggle there is no progress.: -Frederick Douglass
The man who doesn’t know what the universe is doesn’t know where he lives.: -Marcus Aurelius
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.: -Henry Poincaré
Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect; while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.: -Arthur Schopenhauer
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.: -Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.: -Mark Twain
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.: -Mark Twain
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.: -Erich Fromm
Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.: -Thomas Carlyle
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.: -M. Kathleen Casey
It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests.: -Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity
Oral sex should be an Olympic sport. Why? Because it’s harder than curling, and if you’re any good at it, you deserve a medal.: -Lewis Black
If you can’t answer a man’s argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.: -Elbert Hubbard
Several months ago, out of the blue, a company named “Cingular” started sending me bills. I had never heard of Cingular, and I honestly did not know what these bills were for, so I put them in the pile where I keep documents that I intend to scrutinize more carefully later on, after my death. Then I started seeing TV commercials for Cingular, but of course they did not make it clear what Cingular is, because the First Rule of Modern Advertising is: “Never reveal what you are advertising.”: -Dave Barry
...each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.: -Thomas Sowell
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.: -Henri Louis Bergson
Make love, not war. Do both, get married.: -Two graffiti (written by different people) on a bathroom wall
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.: -Robert Louis Stevenson
Britney Spears has used up her 15 minutes of fame, and now she is using Tiffany’s leftover 10 minutes.: -The Vent
But my point is that competitive eating is a real sport, and I considered taking it up. But when I thought about what this would mean—sitting around for hours, stuffing my face with unhealthy food—I realized it was basically the same thing as journalism.: -Dave Barry
Dignity does not consist of possessing honors, but in deserving them.: -Aristotle
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.: -Mark Twain
Have you ever wondered why it takes a bride months and months to plan a wedding, but a good funeral can be pulled together in two days? The elements are all the same—church, minister, music, flowers, guests, food.: -alert reader Lori Rispoli, in a letter to Dave Barry
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.: -Oscar Wilde
If anything were FULLY explained, everything would be explained.: -Friedrich Hebbel
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.: -Thomas Paine
If you want work well done, select a busy man; the other kind has no time.: -Elbert Hubbard
The world is moving so fast now-a-days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.: -Elbert Hubbard
Everything comes too late for those who only wait.: -Elbert Hubbard
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.: -Arthur Schopenhauer
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.: -Henry David Thoreau
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.: -Winston Churchill
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.: -Winston Churchill
The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.: -Winston Churchill
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.: -Winston Churchill
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.: -Winston Churchill
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.: -Winston Churchill
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.: -Winston Churchill
He’s [Stu Miller] got a fastball you could catch in your teeth. Three pitch speeds: slow, slower, and reverse.: -Coach Jim Murray
Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.: -Steven Wright
Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.: -Steven Wright
I once put instant coffee in a microwave and went back in time.: -Steven Wright
I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.: -Steven Wright
If you can’t hear me, it’s because I’m in parentheses.: -Steven Wright
In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number.: -Steven Wright
OK, so what’s the speed of dark?: -Steven Wright
I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.: -Steven Wright
Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.: -Steven Wright
I’m not the only taxpayer who has no idea what he’s sending to the IRS. This year, only 28 percent of all Americans will prepare their own tax returns, according to a voice in my head that invents accurate-sounding statistics.: -Dave Barry
Here’s my proposal, which is based on the TV show Survivor: We put the entire Congress on an island. All the food on this island is locked inside a vault, which can be opened only by an ordinary American taxpayer named Bob. Every day, the congresspersons are given a section of the Tax Code, which they must rewrite so that Bob can understand it. If he can, he lets them eat that day; if he can’t, he doesn’t.: -Dave Barry
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.: -Eric Hoffer
Add a few drops of malice to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.: -Eric Hoffer
My biggest hope is that, after the war, we can get the guy who has kept Iraqi TV up and running to come to work here for the cable company.: -The Vent
Work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance.: -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.: -P.J. O’Rourke
Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.: -Albert Einstein
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.: -Mike Adams
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.: -Thomas Jefferson
It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.: -Alfred Adler
Half the secret of resistance is cleanliness, the other half is dirtiness.: -anonymous
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.: -G.K. Chesterton
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.: -Friedrich Nietzsche
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.: -John Adams
Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice versa.: -Casey Stengel
If someone from Germany or somewhere, who had no idea what baseball was, saw Kruk play, he’d wonder what the beer truck driver was doing playing first base.: -Andy Van Slyke
I would think I drive most hitting coaches crazy. During one single at-bat I used six different stances on six pitches. Oh, yeah, I also struck out. So what do I know?: -John Kruk
Tomorrow’s weather is supposed to be sunny and hot. Tonight’s weather will be moony and cool.: -The Vent
Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one’s ego except by love.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Science is facts. Just as houses are made of stones, so science is made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.: -Henri Poincare
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.: -Desiderius Erasmus
France hasn’t figured out yet how to surrender to the weather.: -The Vent, after a recent spate of summer-heat-related deaths in France
Scissors Kills Paper, Rock; Turns Blade On Self: -The Onion
[O]rganized violence punctuated by committee meetings.: -George Will, defining football
We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle: when it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.: -Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn’t need its brain anymore so it eats it. It’s rather like getting tenure.: -Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know.: -Bertrand Russell
Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics!: -Wolfgang Pauli, 1925
I do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it.: -Erwin Schrödinger, on quantum mechanics
...all nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it.: -Charles Darwin
Without men, civilization would last until the oil needed changing.: -Fred Reed
Goths, Vandals Invade Rome, IL: -The Onion headline
Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I’ll show you a man who can’t take his pants off.: -unknown
As we delight in the strange and exotic beauty of orchid flowers, it is salutary to reflect that we are, in essence, looking at their genitalia.: -a British biologist (from The Beak of the Finch)
Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.: -Romain Gary
There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.: -Aldous Huxley
An apple every four hours will keep six doctors away.: -The Vent
I only wish we could clean things with fire. That would make things so much easier!: -Bobby
Sign seen in a print shop: “Good, Quick, Cheap—pick two.”: -The Vent
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.: -Groucho Marx
We have been so anxious to give our children what we did not have that we have neglected to give them what we did have.: -The Vent
If you are willing to admit faults, you have one less fault to admit.: -unknown
Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.: -some corny senior-quote-like saying I read in Sarah’s AIM profile
Sir, I have found you an explanation, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.: -Samuel Johnson
Hmm... I wonder if it can match porn stars...: -Kelly, on the Oracle of Bacon, in his desperate search for an actor with a Bacon number of 3
When looking for a reason why people do certain things, never rule out sheer stupidity.: -Walter E. Williams, on airport security screeners
It may be just coincidence, but man’s best friend cannot talk.: -unknown
Whenever I don’t feel so well, I always try remind myself of the Siamese twin whose brother is gay, whose boyfriend is coming over...and they share the same asshole.: -Jay Mohr, supposedly quoting Buddy Hackett
It is good to die before one has done anything deserving death.: -Anaxandrides
God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.: -Elbert Hubbard
Those who wish to sing always find a song.: -Swedish proverb
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.: -Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.: -Chinese Proverb
If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation If there is order in the nation, there will be Peace in the World.: -Chinese Proverb
I said to my doctor last week, “My penis is burning.” He said, “That just means someone’s talking about it.”: -Billy Crystal
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.: -Mel Brooks
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.: -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.: -Anton Chekhov
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.: -Mark Twain
This woman has been married so many times, she suffers from bouquet elbow.: -David Letterman, on Jennifer Lopez
Never in the history of Major League Baseball have so many been paid so much to play so poorly.: -The Vent
It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country, in defense of us, in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives—the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember.: -Ronald Reagan
Cast, Crew Of Troy Begin Disastrous 10-Year Journey Back To Hollywood: -The Onion headline
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.: -Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.: -Henry David Thoreau
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.: -Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.: -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet”
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.: -Buckminster Fuller
Farmer Brown froze in his tracks; the cows stared wide-eyed back at him. Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked.: -Gary Larson, the caption of my all-time favorite comic
The weightlifting competition I saw was the women’s 63 kg class. I’m not sure whether this means the actual women weighed 63 kg or the weights they lifted weighed 63 kg. Or possibly the temperature in the weightlifting hall was 63 kg. There’s no way to know for sure without finding out what a “kg” is, and my belief, as an American, is that if I have to start understanding the metric system, then the terrorists have won.: -Dave Barry
Dear Friends, Apologies for the mass e-mail, but wanted to show pictures of Bobby Jr. before we pack up! Sorry if you didn’t know about the move—we’ve been so busy!! And for those of you who didn’t know I was pregnant—whoops! What a crazy nine months!! Hadn’t heard I’d gotten married? Bob (he’s REALLY great) and I tied the knot just after law school. You knew I quite the interior design firm for law school, right? Hope everything’s good with you!! Here’s my new e-mail:: -Hillary Price, “Rhymes With Orange”
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.: -Woody Allen
Men: You know how, when your wife can’t open a pickle jar, she gives it to you, and you’re supposed to smile in a manly patronizing way as you effortlessly twist it open? That’s not what happens in our house. What happens is, after a grim struggle lasting several minutes, I wind up lying on the kitchen floor, exhausted and whimpering, while the pickle jar, unopened, laughs and flirts boldly with my wife. Sometimes it gives me a wedgie.: -Dave Barry
I told my doctor I think my wife has VD. He gave himself a shot of penicillin.: -Rodney Dangerfield
You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.: -Christy Mathewson
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.: -George Carlin
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning to a friendship, and it is far the best ending to one.: -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.: -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Peole say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.: -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.: -Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary
Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.: -Ernest Hemingway
...there is only one game at the heart of America and that is baseball, and only one beverage to be found sloshing at the depths of our national soul and that is beer.: -Peter Richmond
I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.: -Frank Sinatra
You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.: -Dean Martin
Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.: -Kaiser Welhelm
Beer: So much more than just a breakfast drink.: -Whitstran Brewery sign
Is life worth living? That depends on the liver.: -unknown
Dolphins evolve opposable thumbs 'Oh, shit,' says humanity: -The Onion
There's no better way of using the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.: -Jean Giraudoux
It's the Michael Jackson commemorative line of candy, for Valentine's Day. It's lovely, it's delicious: it's white chocolate with a nut inside.: -David Letterman
Guns don't kill people; husbands that come home early do.: -Larry the Cable Guy
Homosexual Dolphin Has Highly Developed Sense Of Gay-Nar: -The Onion
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.: -Jean Jacques Rousseau
Girls were nice to me in the same way that they would be nice to a hamster. I fantasized about wild encounters with females but knew they'd never happen unless my own involvement could somehow go undetected.: -Joel Achenbach, on college
Ünited Stätes Toughens Image With Umlauts In a move designed to make the United States seem more “bad-ass and scary in a quasi-heavy-metal manner,” Congress passed a bill Monday changing the nation's name to the Ünited Stätes of Ämerica. “Much like Mötley Crüe and Motörhead, the Ünited Stätes is not to be messed with,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).: -The Onion
Motor Trend Car of the Year stripped of title after appearing as Hot Rod centerfold: -The Onion
Don't be so humble; you are not that great.: -Golda Meir
I could point out that, to judge from the covers of countless women's magazines, the two topics most interesting to women are (1) Why men are all disgusting pigs, and (2) How to attract men.: -Dave Barry
You say potato, I say vodka.: -unknown
Fear Factor creator's will: 'Heirs must eat my ashes to collect inheritance': -The Onion
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.: -Pancho Villa's last words
My work is done, why wait?: -George Eastman, founder of Kodak, in his suicide note
All right, then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick.: -Lope de Vega's last words, when assured on his deathbed his end was very near
I have a terrific headache.: -Franklin Roosevelt's last words
Go away. I'm all right.: -H.G. Wells's last words
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.: -Theodosius Dobzhansky
Push. Push. Push.: -sign on a door in a hospital maternity ward (as opposed to just saying "Push" or "Pull"...)
You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.: -Joseph Heller (Colonel Korn), Catch-22
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.: -Alice Roosevelt Longworth
For three days after death hair and fingernails contiue to grow but phone calls taper off.: -Johnny Carson
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.: -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Egotist: n. A person more interested in himself than in me.: -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.: -Joan Rivers
The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.: -Sam Levenson
Marriage: n. A master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all two.: -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
It is better to be a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life.: -Irish proverb
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anyboydy who can write better.: -A.J. Liebling
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.: -Mark Twain
An ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.: -Augustine Birrell
If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.: -Alice Roosevelt Longworth
I went around the world last year, and you want to know something? It hates each other.: -Edward J. Mannix
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.: -John W. Raper
It is impossible to enjoy idling unless there is plenty of work to do.: -Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In a Boat
You can't measure time in days the way you can money in dollars because every day is different.: -Jorge Luis Borges
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.: -Samuel Johnson
The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters; they begin by choosing the best and then end by eating everything.: -Sébastien Chamfort
If you were a member of Jesse James's band and people asked you what you were, you wouldn't say, "Well, I'm a desperado." You'd say something like, "I work in banks," or, "I've done some railroad work." It took me a long time just to say, "I'm a writer." It's really embarrassing.: -Roy Blount, Jr.
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.: -Miss Manners
Sex is dirty only when it's done right.: -unknown
Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses.: -H.H. Munro (Saki)
The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man and a blind woman.: -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.: -Tommy Manville
You don't know anything about a woman until you meet her in court.: -Norman Mailer
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.: -Clarence Darrow
The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.: -George Orwell
How should they answer?: -Abigail Van Buren, in reply to the question "Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?"
I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.: -Dick Gregory
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?: -Edgar Bergen
It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.: -Jackie Mason
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.: -Redd Foxx
I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them are trash.: -Sigmund Freud
We're all in this alone.: -Lily Tomlin, on life
Great Moments in Literature: In 1936, Ernest Hemingway, while trout fishing, caught a carp and decided not to write about it.: -Guindon cartoon caption
You call this a script? Give me a couple $5,000-a-week writers and I'll write it myself.: -Joe Pasternak, movie producer
When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.: -Raymond Chandler
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.: -Will Rogers
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.: -Ovid
People who think they know everything are very irritating to those of us who do.: -unknown
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.: -George Santayana
Carney's Law: There's at least a 50-50 chance that someone will print the name Craney incorrectly.: -Jim Canrey
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.: -Pablo Picasso
Serial killer remembers neighbors as quiet, unsuspecting: -The Onion
Little Debbie conquers Jenny Craig in midnight showdown: -The Onion
C-SPAN releases Too Hot For C-SPAN! video: -The Onion
6-year-old announces plans to become ballerina gymnast veterinarian horseback-riding princess: -The Onion
God answers prayers of paralyzed little boy ‘No,’ says God: -The Onion
Binge-drinking, promiscuous sex good for you, says New Orleans Journal of Medicine: -The Onion
Raped environment led polluters on, defense attorneys argue: -The Onion
After 20 years of searching, you are forced to admit that there just isn't anything good on TV.: -The Onion horoscope
Though you have always considered the difference psychological, you will be horrified to learn that men and women also have substantial physical distinctions.: -The Onion horoscope
Remember that to please everyone is impossible, except perhaps in the case of everyone just wanting you to stop singing showtunes at your desk..: -The Onion horoscope
Famous quotations are for people who have nothing of their own to say, so be sure to use a lot of them.: -The Onion horosocope
Ladies and gentlemen, a long time ago there were lots of people... But that was a long time ago.: -Dana Carvey, the greatest stand-up special ever
If you would love each other, you must first laugh together.: -me
The only problem with that movie is that the ending was sooooo Hollywood. There's no way that team would have beaten the Russians.: -Mike Wickett, on Miracle
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.: -Carl Sagan
King Latifah returns for wife: -The Onion
...Wine, lilies, and roses; the dark sea rolling beyond the windows under a round moon; young lovers separated for half a year, joined on a knife-edge of geography between war and peace, suddenly married, far from home; isolated, making love on a broad hospitable bed, performing secret rites as old as time, but forever fresh and sweet between young lovers, the best moments human existence offers—such was their wedding night. The human predicament sometimes seems a gloomy tapestry with an indistinct, baffling deisgn that swirls around and inward to brilliant naked lovers. The Bible starts with this centerpiece. Most of the old stories end with the lovers married, retiring to their sacred nakedness. But for Byron and Natalie, their story was just beginning. The lavish pulses and streams of love died into the warm deep sleep of exhausted lovers: Mr. and Mrs. Byron Henry, Americans, slumbering in wedlock in the Palace Hotel outside Lisbon, on a January night of 1941, one of the more than two thousand nights of the Second World War, when so much of mankind slept so badly.: -Herman Wouk, The Winds of War
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour!”: -Winston Churchill

We have three receivers, Tennessee playing what amounts to a 4-4. Fake, and there’s a—touchdown! Touchdown! My god, a touchdown! We threw it to Haynes! We just dumped it with 5 seconds left.
My god almighty, did you see what he did?! David Greene just straightened up and we snuck the fullback over. Haynes is keeping the ball. Haynes has come running all the way across to the bench. We just dumped it over, it’s 26-24. We just stepped on their face with a hobnail boot and broke their nose. We just crushed their face…